An introduction
My wife is Bi-Polar. And I don’t know how to fully express what that disease has done to my family.
At first, I wanted to blame somebody else. When we were dating, I wanted to believe her when she told me that all of her problems were her parents fault. She made me hate them. She told me stories of beatings and strangulations. She told me how she had committed herself. She told me how she was without anybody to love her. I believed her. I believed that once removed from her surroundings it would all of a sudden get better. I thought she would just leave all of the baggage behind.
Next came hard times. We were newlyweds. Money was tight. I felt like I was the only concerned about money. I wanted an equal so desperately, but I felt more like a parent. I convinced myself that this was all because she never had anybody show her trust. That perhaps she just needed to be treated as an equal. Disappointment after disappointment ensued.
Then disappointment turned to betrayal. Her parents were not the bad guys any more. I found myself on the defensive. She would tell anybody that listened that I was the bad guy. I would be trapped in irrational argument after argument trying to defend myself for actions that did not happen. You can only be told you are a bad person so many times before you start believing it.
After several separations and several years of counseling for the abuse I received, it finally hit me like a light switch being turned on. This isn’t my fault. It isn’t her parents fault. It isn’t even her fault. In fact, “fault” isn’t the word. The word is disease. It was time to stop seeking blame and start seeking help.
That road has been slow and rocky. Getting her to accept she has a problem was difficult. Keeping her parents from talking her out of the acceptance has been a bigger problem.
My wife is now getting help and I get by day to day on the dream that she will eventually get better. And I have to admit that a lot of favorable things have happened to lift my spirits in the last year. Despite those positives, there are still disappointments, abandonment’s, and betrayals that leave me wondering why I choose to live this way.
I choose to believe that I am not alone. I choose to believe that there are other husbands and wives in the world right now living with the same feelings of isolation and despair. I love my wife. And I believe with the help of my Lord, Jesus Christ, she will get better.
This web site is about sharing feelings. I want to show that even the strongest of us can not overcome this disease on our own. I also want to show that there is hope. And most of all, it is my dream that I can help to show at least one person somewhere that they are not alone.